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Book 

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AN 



ORATION 



DELIVERED BY 



BENJAMIN F. HALLETT, 



AT 



OXFORD, MASS., 
July 5, 1841. 






O R A T I O N 



BEFORE THE 

DEMOCRATIC CITIZENS 



OF 



OXFORD, 

AND THE ADJOINING TOWNS, 

IN 

WORCESTER COUNTY, 

MASSACHUSETTS, 

i 

JULY 5, 1841. 



BY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN HALLETT. 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY BEALS AND GREENE. 

1841 









I' I Itl.lsHKH BY KKtjl EST OF THE COMMITTEE 
OP \Kl: INGEMENT8, FOB THE CELEBB \TH>N OF THE 1th 
OF ii l\ 1841, \l OXFORD, WORCESTER COUNT! 



OH1 

M>'06 



ORATION 



Friends — A great change has come over us since the people 
of this country assembled a year ago, to recall the glorious asso- 
ciations that will ever surround this day, so long as the love of 
freedom shall throb in a single bosom. 

For the first time in the.last forty years of our national history, 
a majority of the people have brought the federal party into power- 

A year ago, a measure hailed by the party then in the majority 
as a second Declaration of Independence, the Constitutional 
Treasury Bill, was signed by Mr Van Buren, the President of the 
United States, and became the law of the land. To-day he is a 
private citizen, and that great measure of his administration, 
which he sustained with such lofty integrity and devoted fidelity, 
has passed under the ban of his successor in office, and is in the 
progress of repeal by the new Congress. 

An extra session of the national legislature, under the call of 
the new administration, is now convened at Washington, busily 
engaged in the process of creating a national debt, establishing 
a national bank, enforcing a high tariff, increasing expenses, 
and indirectly assuming the state debts, by a distribution of the 
revenue derived from the public lands. 

The divorce between bank and state, so solemnly decreed by 
the people, has been annulled, the bans of marriage are again pro- 
claimed in the Senate Chunber, and the state is once more to be 
put under bonds, to love, honor, and obey the banks. 

These are great changes, and they were brought about by great 
efforts and great promises. 



meant this in the late election, is by no 

was but little discussion of measures- 

the promise was, h<ttir timi>. No matter 

iiail been in power; the condition of the 

night) effort to move the n the restlessness of 

tinted, the lavish expenditures, the e:: for office, 

thr interference of foreign fund holders, the clamor of ruined 

. the artificial | of hard times, which was to be 

I the momenl General Harrison should b I. and the 

tion of a return to the inflated and delusive paper 

rit) of 1836, — would have produced the change. And yet 

it was hut bar cted,for although General Harrison received 

tin of oil "in of twenty-- -. vet a 

change of but eighteen thousand out of two millions of votes, 

in of the cloa !. contested states, would have changed 

ill of t! ion. 

hi ttled by this election, that the 

,t to re-establish thof phich they had 

istinctl • General a retoirj 

This remains to b !, and the country is in gain 

throw:, ponthe discussioi uk or no bank, debt or 

sumption or no assumption, high tariff or free trade, 

dation or state rights, and on these grounds parties will 

in divide, and musl stand or fall in the contest 

ut election, the position of the democratic partj is 

d t'r lefence to attack. T gallant!] sus- 

ned to the last The attack should be vigorous, unceasing but 
manly, V ret did a party more manfully hold their ground, and 

:i their principles, than the democratic party in the I 
most exciting and embittered political contest that ev< r tested the 
ih of our institutions. Tl i, but believing 

• do, tli m re beaten with reason and right on their side. 

ire honoi ible than the vi ipc- 

bj the mean- in.. id in the end the 

will be more disappointed in finding how lit! 

■ I gain bj the change that cost them so much, (save the 



5 



mere possession of office,) than the democratic party will be, by 
going, for a brief season, into a minority in the national coun- 
cils. It is a wholesome, perhaps a needful lesson, and will profit 
them in the end. 

The defeated party has not surrendered an inch of ground, or 
abandoned a single measure. They will be firm, but not factious 
in opposition, and will present an array of talent, strength, perse- 
verance, and united councils, more powerful and effective than 
any administration has ever yet encountered. False measures 
cannot stand lono- against such united, honest and determined 
opposition, even if the discordant materials of the party which 
united only in opposition, and had no settled purpose in view, can 
harmonize sufficiently to give .these measures the form of laws 
enacted by Congress, and approved by the President. The com- 
ing four years will, therefore, be a thorough and trying test of the 
hading policy of the two parties that have' divided the country, 
from the first election of Jefferson to the present time. 

It is virtually the issue whether free government is to go back- 
ward or forward — whether the American or the European system 
shall prevail — whether we shall have a government of men or of 
corporations — the rule of the people, or the reign of the dynasty 
of associated wealth. Such was not understood to be the issue 
at the polls, when the people voted, but it is now developed by 
the extra session. 

While the election was in progress, the measures of the new 
administration were left to conjecture. The leaders, presses and 
orators of that party were explicit in nothing. They assailed 
every point, rallied every material of disaffection, gave up every 
preference or qualification to mere availability, roused every preju- 
dice, appealed to every passion, heaped upon the administration 
the responsibility of every private or public evil, — turned all the 
courses of business into the vortex of politics, and made politics 
their only business, — created and magnified all imaginary or real 
•distress in pecuniary concerns to charge it upon the government, 
— retrained from all general declaration of principles, or avowal 
of measures, — while professing in each state or section to go for 



rucular polio of th on, — were lavish of money, re> 

' prodigal of promises: and they succeed- 

\ -ime amount of excitement can be stirred 

up . uilar government, from an) cause right or wrong, and 

i ide to believe the misrepresentations thai 
and give to falsehood the force of truth, the party 
the machinery will, for the time, succeed. But it is 
always a dangerous experiment, and if of frequent occurrence, 
will undermine the public virtue and demoralize, degrade, and 
brutalize a people, beyond the capacity of sober self-government. 
Bir are the means by which this change has 

II, given additional proof of the strength 
institutions. The will of the majoi ity, though thus doubt- 
fully, m irruptly obtained, has been quietly yielded to. 
ratic party which had held the ascendency for fortv 
• mi, retired without a murmur, relying solely 
stitutional forms of opposition to regain the power they 

the mighty ocean of popular excitement has 

:, and not a broken fragment of the Constitution 

>und floating ou the surface. The conflict has passed, and 

th( irotherhood of citizenship which binds us to our com- 

tuntrj remains unsevered in our National Union, as a 

mis people — and even though popular rights maj 

and the progress of true equality retarded for a 

time by this result of the recent election, still the rousing of the 

public mind to the great questions that really divide parties among 

d illusion of information upon those measures of 

finance, winch bad befori iccounted the mysteries of bank* 

>r common apprehension — the awakening of ei 

citizen to portion of the - n will, — will 

larate the right from the wrong, the true from the 

the pure from th ish, and lead to the permanent estab- 

dodi of equal justice, and equal laws, in the full developement 

cond thought of the people, which is never 

wtw ectual." 



What other nation on earth could have so rapidly passed 
through such untried scenes, and come out so little scathed ? 
In a single month we witnessed the change of power and place 
from one party to another, and in the same brief period, three 
Presidents of the Union went out or came into the Supreme 
Magistracy. 

In the consciousness of having sacrificed place to duty, of 
having abided faithfully by the principles of the Constitution 
in their purity, and sought the good of the many at the price 
of personal advancement; the President of the last adminis- 
tration retired to the calm duties of a private citizen, with the 
quiet dignity of conscious rectitude, and the calm approval of 
the sober judgment of those who had elevated him to honor, 
and whose measures he had never faltered in maintaining 
with inflexible fidelity. 

The acclamations of the victorious party, which bore his 
successor into office, had scarcely ceased, when the inaugural 
address was changed to the funeral eulogy, and the lifeless 
form of the unfortunate deceased President, in its silent return 
to the home from which it had so recently gone forth, full of 
life, and surrounded with pomp and pageantry; was borne by a 
few sad friends in stillness, through the same cities that had 
just before swarmed with their thousands, to greet him in his 
triumphal progress to the Capitol. 

It was a grand moral spectacle to witness a whole people, 
just before struggling for victory in nearly equally divided 
parties, uniting in magnanimous forgetfulness of all party divi- 
sions, in becoming offices of respect to the memory of the 
departed President. 

And then came, without ajar or a conflict, the accession of 
the third President, in this brief space, not by the direct choice 
of the people, but by the silent operation of a provision in the 
Constitution, tried for the first time in our history. 

After all this, who shall say that a Republican Government, 
resting on the sovereign will of the people, is less capable of 
sustaining itself in any crisis, than the moat approved and best 



guarded monarchy ? Who shall doubt that the popular voice, 
in selecting the Chief Ruler, is as effective, as uniform, and 
peaceful, as the wisest system of hereditary succession ? Here 
let us hold, and hence let every lover of his country draw new 
sources of confidence in the permanency of that admirable and 
unequalled system of government, the foundation of which our 
fathers laid on this memorable day, and transmitted to us, 
reared in the strength of their wisdom, and cemented with 
their blood. 

In this contest between the democratic principle of true 
equality, and the power of concentrated wealth, which is now 
the great struggle of parties in this country, the popular prin- 
ciple was embodied in the retired President of the United 
States, as its representative, and the paper money power, 
which achieved his defeat, in the self deposed President of the 
United States Bank. Where are they now, and how stand 
they in the judgment of the people ? What a different page 
will be assigned to each in the after history of these stirring 
times. 

I know not what other men may think, but for my single 
self, and such I believe will be the sober judgment of poster- 
ity, I would rather be Martin Van Buren raising cabbages 
at Kinderhook, than Nicholas BidcUe in his Andalusia palace, 
dining on his thirty thousand dollar plate, and eating the fruit 
of his forty thousand dollar grapery, plundered from the widows 
and orphans he has beggared ; with a prosecution hanging over 
him for fraud, in the exercise of his sublime ait of financier- 
ing money out of other people's pockets into his own ! 

And yet the leaders of the very party who have risen to 
power upon the ruin they made by the grinding of the people 
in the terrible machinery of the broken bank, — proclaimed to 
the world, in the mi. 1st of the artificial distress they had cre- 
ate.!, that prosperity would be restored in forty-eight hours, it 
Nicholas Biddle, instead of Levi Woodbury, were placed at 
the head of the Treasury ! 

And now that they have the power of wielding all the mean 



of the government, which, when out of power, they charged 
as responsible for every ruinous speculation, and bound to 
make good all losses in trade, and to regulate all fluctuations 
in business — the only means they propose is another bank, to 
be administered by another Middle, to go through the same 
struggle for supreme power, the same expansions and contrac- 
tions, and again to fall, dragging down, alike the reckless and 
the prudent, in its wide spread ruin. 

I have said that the recent conflict of parties has well tested 
the permanency of our institutions in the worst of times. But it 
should never be forgotten, that no tolerably free nation has ever 
withstood, and none can long withstand the demoralizing influ- 
ences of popular elections, conducted as this has been. There 
is, indeed, much for the patriot to lament in the means resorted 
to, to bring the present dominant party into power. It is a 
page in our history, that the children of those who were fore- 
most in the agitation, will blush to read, and over which Liber- 
ty will drop a tear, and wish to blot it out forever. The haters 
of free institutions, all over the world, will exult at it, as a 
proof that the mass of the people may be led by " the scent of 
a cider cask," wherever the aristocracy may choose to lead 
them, — that they are fickle and puerile, not fit to be appealed' 
to by argument or reason, but, like the mobs of Rome, inflamed 
by appeals to their lowest passions, and carried oh" at the heels 
of the Catalines who will expend the most money to amuse 
them with pageants, and shows, and treats, and procession-;. 

It will be painful, in all coming time, to meet this reproach 
upon free institutions and the seeming folly of free suffrage. 

It has given an argument to the task masters of the down- 
trodden and half starved laborers of Europe, Btronger to bind 
them in their old chains, than all their police and poor laws, 
and standing armies. 

For here it is — in the only country where the voice of the 
working man can be heard in making the laws ; here, where 
his votes number a thousand to one of those who live on the 
sweat of his brow — here, Labor has carried the election against 



o 



10 

itself! — yielded to the threat? and enticements of the selfish 
few who plunder it by paper charters ; thrown its weight into 
the scale of false credit against honest industry — paper premi- 
ses against a constitutional currency, monopolies against indi- 
vidual industry, and corporations against men. It has deserted 
the first President who ever threw himself entirely into the 
arms of productive lahor against a borrowing aristocracy ; who 
established the ten hour system, which the working man had 
so long and so vainly sighed for, and who, instead of yielding 
to the blandishments of the banks, that would have given him 
;; Roman triumph and a British coronation, had he but consent- 
ed to make them a partner in the government, braved all the 
power of associated wealth in the inflexible support of the only 
measures that, in the distribution of wealth resulting from the 
union of capital and labor, can secure to the latter a just share. 

And this result is the more discouraging to those who, in 
this great issue relied on labor to maintain its political inde- 
pendence of false wealth, because it has been brought about 
by the party whose prominent men, from the Revolution to the 
present time, have doubted the capacity of the people for self 
government. " Lo ! they exclaim, we have never before ' de- 
scended into the forum' to court and amuse, and humbug the 
populace, and therefore for forty years federalism has been in 
a minority. Now we have practised on our real belief that 
the people must be fooled and fawned upon, and brutalized, in 
order to get their votes, and behold the result in the gloriou: 
victory of our well fought hard cider 1 1 ijpaign" '. What answer 
will the honest, but deceived workingman, give to that taunt, 
who followed and shouted for higher wages, in the Log Cabin 
pageants, when he now finds the time of his daily toil length- 
ened, and his earnings cut down, by the men who used him as 
the Roman patricians did the plebeian-, t.. swell a triumph, ill 
which he was to have no share, but to serve his masters for 
less pay ! 

Hamilton, in opposition to Jefferson, maintained that the 
people were turbulent ami changing, that thev seldom judged 



II 

or determined right, and therefore, that to balance the Consti- 
tution, it was indispensable to give to the rich and the well 
born, a distinct and permanent share in the government. 

This federal dogma was strongly urged in that day, and wa3 
carried through one term in the administration of the elder 
Adams. But Hamilton died* Out of office, and his British 
principles were repudiated by the people, though never surren- 
dered by the leaders of the federal party. 

It is remarkable that at the end of fifty years from the time 
Hamilton held the office of Secretary of the Treasury, and after 
the sleep of half a century had seemed to have consigned his 
doctrines to ' the receptacle of things lost on earth,' they should 
be again proclaimed to the people, as the only true faith, by 
the present head of that department. 

Hamilton was honest as a patriot, but an unmitigated unbe- 
liever in the capacity of the people for self government. John 
Adams approved of the British Constitution, as the best system 
of government, provided it could be stripped of its corruption. 
Hamilton went farther, and admired it with all its corruption, 
as the best model on earth, and like Walpole, he verily believed 
that the only safe way to govern, was by indirection, bribery, 
and corruption. His first agent in that system was a funded 
debt and a national bank. 

The Cabinet now in power at Washington, and the party that 
follow it in Congress, are devising precisely the measures that 
Hamilton relied on, fifty years ago, to prop up government, by 
giving to the rich and the well born, a greater share of privi- 
leges, than to the mass of the people. They are creating a 
debt, for they cannot find one ready made, and establishing a 
National Bank. They are doing just what Hamilton and Ad- 
ams did, and what Jefferson and Jackson undid. 

After opposing every Republican feature in the Constitution, 
that was debated in the Convention which framed that Consti- 
tution, Hamilton came into the Cabinet of Washington, under 
the new Constitution, but without any faith in its efficacy, and 
was placed at the head of the Treasury in 1790, with the con- 



12 

trol of the money power, which he modeled to the extent of hi* 
means, upon the British system. So that, in point of fact, 
though the Constitution was framed expressly to guard against 
monopoly and the frauds of paper emissions, that principle, 
without which there can be no just equality in the means of 
acquiring, possessing and enjoying property, has never had a 
fair trial in our government. The country at no time has been 
entirely free from the Hamiltonian school, though it was shaken 
off' for a time, and now it is again upon us, as at the beginning, 
when the government went into operation with the determina- 
tion of one of the ablest men in it, to give it. as strong a mo- 
narchical tendency as possible, and to counteract and check the 
extension of the democratic principle. N 

With the exception of Jefferson, to whom we owe it that the 
British system which Hamilton, Adams and Ames worshipped, 
was not fastened upon us past relief short of revolution ; most 
of the leading spirits after Washington's administration either 
doubted or utterly denied the democratic principle. They hon- 
estly believed that to trust the people with self-government, 
would destroy all government. 

"A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery ele- 
ments of its own destruction," exclaimed Fisher Ames. 

"If we incline too much to democracy, said Hamilton, we 
shall shoot into a monarchy," and the reasons he gave for 
checking the tendencies to democracy were the same as those 
given by Daniel Webster in 1820, viz: "the necessity of keep- 
ing up an inequality of political rights and condition in order 
to preserve the inequality of property." 

" The difference of property," said Hamilton, "is already 
• real anions us. Commerce and industry will increase the 

to to ^ 

disparity. You must meet this, or combinations in time will 
undermine your system." 

Thai is, the tendencies to inequality were Buch under the ope- 
ration- of special legislation which gave exclusive advantages to 
the few, thai unless the extension of the Democratic principle 
checked, (he many would inBial upon a nighei approach to 



13 

equality of rights and condition, and would combine against 1 1 »*-* 
few to undermine such a system. 

On precisely i ho same ground Mt Webster opposed free suf- 
frage in the Massachusetts Convention of 1820, thinking as Ham- 
ilton and hio school of politicians always do, not of the people, 
but of the money; not of the mas.-, but. of the privileged few. 

Hence the extension of the Democratic principle was to be 
checked wherever it might interfere with the exclusive acquisition 
of properly by the rich, and Mr. Webster exclaims, of all that 
class " who have not property and see their neighbours possess 
much more than they think them to need,"—" It looks on prop- 
erty as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready at all times for 
violence and revolution !" 

The aim of Mr. Webster in bis theory of government, was so 
to limit suffrage as to prevent that portion of community who are 
deprived of the exclusive privileges of special legislation, from 
out voting those who possess these privileges. He was alarmed at 
the tendency of democracy to break down political and individual 
inequality, and the remedy he proposed lies in the modern Whig 
dogma which he proclaimed— " It is the part of political wisdom 
to found government on property." In other words, to take care 
of the rich and let the rich take care of the poor. 

Hamilton's fears were precisely the same, and he proposed the 
like remedy to protect the rich and well born against the tenden- 
cies to equality. He would have done this, by direct provision 
for an hereditary Senate and a President for life. His follow 
have ever since attempted to do it, by charters of incorporation 
and special legislation. 

You thus see a most remarkable and precise coincidence, be- 
tween the fear of the people and the remedies proposed to check 
the extension of democracy, by Hamilton, the leader of the fed- 
eral party in 1791, and Webster, the leader of the federal party 
in 1841; the very man in whose person after the lapse of half a 
century, Alexander Hamilton is in fad again placed at the head 
of the Cabinet 

These coincidences are not accidental, but the result of long 



14 

settled notions of government in the aristocratic party of tin* 
country. It is the developement of the monarchical principle iu 
government in opposition to the extension of the democratic 
principle. 

And both these political leaders at the head of the federal party, 
and at a distance of time of more than forty years, have propo- 
to carry out their conservative doctrine of protecting the rich 
against the prey and plunder of the poor, in precisely the same 
form and by the same agency; a national debt, an United States 
Bank, and chartered monopolii 

'Hamilton found this feature in the British Constitution h< 
devoutly admired, and he labored to incorporate it into our - 
tern. Jefferson opposed it, and under those two distinct princi- 
ples have parties ever since been arrayed in this government. 
The struggle was a severe on* between Hamilton and Jefferson. 
in the Cabinet of Washington. J3ut unfortunately the President 
yielded to Hamilton's representation of the necessity of a bank 
to manage the national debt left by the Revolution, and which 
then amounted to the enormous sum of $75,169,000. 

Hamilton, as the head of the Treasury, dem i bank -*is a 

means indispensable to the management of this debt, and thus an 
abuse was sanctioned for the sake of its present utility. 

In fact, as a mere agent of the Treasury, in collecting and dis- 
tributing the revenue, and practically without the power to dis- 
count issues, and mike a currency, the first bank was an appen- 
dage of the Treasury Department, and so far:' means to can} 
into effect by Con the powers grained in the Constitution. 

It was then strictly a fiscal agent, and nothing more. 

Again, in 1 s 1 r» the Bank question was stired The countrj 
had come out of the exhaustion of the second war of Indepen- 
dence, without commerce, manufactures, or resources to bus! 
itself ; with B depressed revenue and a national debt of on< 
hundred and fifty seven millions. 

Under these circumstances a bank was again chartered. 
against the vehement opposition of Mr. Webster and his school 
of politicians who are now in power. The bank was supposed 



15 

to be an efficient a^ent in sustaining the revenue and credit of 
the government, and it was reluctantly yielded to by President 
Madison, as a stern necessity. Mr. Webster and those who 
are now most clamorous for a bank, were the most vehement 
opponents of the charter in 18 1(1, and though utterly inconsis- 
tent in principle he was, in fact, consistent in policy then with 
bis position now. He opposed the bank then, in order to 
weaken the government. It was hoped by the opposition of 
that day that the pressure of the war and the public debt would 
drive the democratic party from power, and bring in the feder- 
alists. The bank, therefore, was not wanted by that party, 
because it was supposed it would strengthen the administra- 
tion, and sustain the public credit. 

For the like reason, Mr. Webster and his party supported 
this same bank, as soon as it placed itself in opposition to a 
democratic administration, and made it the rallying point of 
their struggle to change the government. 

It was defeated in that struggle, and became so odious, that 
the bank question was kept out of sight by the whig party du- 
ring the whole of the last canvass. Their leaders denied that 
they were fighting for a bank, and the people believed them 
and put them into power, and their first measure is to make a 
bank, — but thinking again to deceive the people, by " a change 
of name," they do not call it a National Bank, but a " Fiscal 
Agent," or an " Exchequer of issue ;" any thing but its true 
name lest the people should suspect it of having the same stale 
" national odor" as its corrupt predece.- 

In all these changes in relation to a bank, there has been no 
change in the operation of the two conflicting principles, the 
aristocratic and the democratic, which always has and always 
will divide parties among us, to the day of the millcnium. 

The moment the true President of the people, the venerable 
Jackson, the firmest Roman of them all, refused to jrield up the 
government to the dictation of the ban'., the bank resolved to 
put down the government, and thus it at once became to the 
opposition an element of political power. 



16 

The pretext for its existence was at an end, by the payment 
of the national debt, which was the cause of its being charter- 
ed. It had then become precisely the machine which Hamil- 
ton wanted ; to give to the rich and the well born a distinct 
classification and influence in the government, to the exclusion 
of the mass of the people. It was the great money lever with 
which the bank aristocracy were to subject the workingmen to 
tribute, and pry up and overthrow the numerical democracy. 

Again, it was put down by the people. I beg you to mark 
that, my fellow citizens. In this fact we must now all agree. 
The democrats have ever maintained it, the whigs must admit 
it, for the acting President himself affirms it. That I may be 
sure of being right here, let me quote his language. 

" The charier of the Bank of the United States, (says Mr. Tyler in his 
Message) expired by its own limitation in 1836. An effort was made to 
renew it, which received the sanction <>f Congress, but the then President 
exercised his veto power, and the measure was defeated. A reward to 
truth requires me to Bay thai the President was fully sustained in the 
course lie had taken by the popular voice. His successor in the Chair of 
e unqualifiedly pronounced his opposition to any new charter of a sim- 
ilar institution : and nol only the popular election which brought him into 
power, but the elections through much of his term seemed clearly to indi- 
a concurrence with him in sentiment, on the part of the people." 

And thus we have the singular admission that the people 

have 1 twice put down the bank, but after all have put down the 

party that put down the bank ! No wonder that the acting 

Piesident is in doubt, as he admits he is, whether the people 

know what Ihey want, when he comes to the conclusion that 

thev have declared they are against a national bank, against 

pel banks and against the Independent Treasury! No wonder 

that his Secretary devises a i% fiscal agent" of so Strang* 

character thai Ex-President Adams pronounced it to be of a 

species, unlike any thing in heaven <>r upon earth, or in the 

waters under the earth. 

Bui thoughxthe bank was dead, it was after all, the banking 

influence that triumphed in the last election ; triumphed while 

the monster was expiring in the midst of its struggles for life ; 

triumphed like the scorpion stinging itself to death, in striking 

at its lor ' 



1 



17 

The bank seemingly retired from the contest. The cry of 
" hard times'" was raised which the bank had produced; the 
screws of suspension were applied; the wrecks and ruins of the 
wild speculations the bank had impelled, all came floating down in 
the political stream, to press upon the administration. The mass 
of the people were assailed at every turn by this clamor. The 
ruined were promised restoration to fortune ; the greedy their All 
of gain ; the idle, wealth without labor. The speculator was as- 
sured of a brisk demand for his fancy stocks ; the merchant and 
farmer, higher prices; the laboring men, increased wages, with 
the motto of " roast beef' and tiro dollar* a day," under a whig 
President, and "frog soup, no meat, and fifty cents a day," under 
Martin Van Buren ! In short, evary man who had money or 
credit was promised more, and every man who had neither, as 
much as he wanted of both ! 

The bank was at the bottom of all this. It had -created the 
artificial prosperity of 1836 ; it had withdrawn industry from 
honest pursuits to reckless speculations, until labor became so 
degrading in the eyes of our young men, that this mighty hemis- 
phere, with seventeen millions of souls, could not raise food 
enough for the mouths of the idle, and had to import grain from 
the Baltic ! 

In such a state of things, the bankrupts alone were enough to 
change the politics of the country, and in the desperate hope, 
that change which could not make them worse, might hotter their 
condition, they went in a mass for " Tippecanoe and Tyler too," 
carrying with them every laboring man, upon whose hopes or 
fears, promises or threats could be made to operate. Thev suc- 
ceeded, and for the time it seemed that the contempt the federal 
party had always maintained for the constancy and intelligence of 
the masses, was proved to be well founded. 

But this would be a hasty opinion, unjust to the true working- 
men, the farmers, mechanics and laborers, as a mass. Could we 
but count off the voters in each party, it would be found that a 
large majority of the whole workingmen-voters in the Union, had 

sustained the man who had stood by them and their principles 
<3 



IS 

against the power of credit— wealth. True, many yielded to 
the tvranny of proscription, but who can tell the trials to which 
the poor man was exposed, when he had to choose between sur- 
rendering his vote to his employer, or seeing the bread taken 
from his wife and children ? 

Ever honored be the democratic workingmen who so nobly re- 
sisted the seductions of flattery, the bribes of wealth, the threats 
of power, and voted for their principles at the risk, for the time, 
of the very means of their subsistence. 

There were hundreds of thousands of instances of this Spar- 
tan virtue, in men and women too, in the late election, that 
would well compare with the personal sacrifices of the soldiers in 
the Revolution, who tracked their march in the frozen snow, 
with the blood of their lacerated and naked feet, rather than sur- 
render their independence to the enemy who demanded submis- 
sion, as the price of protection. 

I have briefly traced the origin and failure of the designs of 
Hamilton and the leaders of the federal school, to introduce a 
modified form of the British system into our Government. It 
will thus be seen that a great monied institution lias always been 
the chief agent in that design. This very question of the consti- 
tutionality of a bank, which we have got to go all over again, 
was directly tried and distinctly settled in the Convention that 
framed the Constitution. This fact, which one party so carefully 
conceal, cannot be too often repeated by the other. That Con- 
vention expressly refused to give Congress the power to mak 
bank or erect any other kind of corporation. The Madison pa- 
pers confirm this.* "A proposition was made, (says Mr. Jeffer- 
son,) to authorize Congress to open canals, and to empower 
thi in to incorporate; but the whole was rejected, and one of the 
nasons of rejection urged in debate, was that they would then 
have power to create a bank " 

On two occasions, and in two distinct forms, August IS, and 
September 14, 1TS7, a motion was brought forward to give power 
to erect a corporation by Congress, and was twice voted down by 
the framers of the Constitution. 

♦ Vol. .''. pp. l.Y7<>_77. By a vote of eight Ptatee again*' , '° tb»« fcr Incorporations 



19 

In 1798 the Massachusetts Convention, which barely 'adopted 
the United States Constitution by only twelve majority, refused to 
accept it at all, until, un the motion of Samuel Adams and John 
Hancock, an amendment was proposed, declaring that Congress 
should erect no company with exclusive advantages of com- 
merce, in other words, no bank or corporation or monopoly com- 
pany whatever. 

That was the doctrine of Hancock and Sam. Adams and the 
rest, but the Massachusetts Whig doctrine, as expounded by Mr. 
Webster, now is, that it is the imperative) duty of Congress to 
erect a special company of paper money makers for the purpose 
of enabling the great merchants and manufacturers and bankers 
to carry on their business ; but not a word is said about Congress 
establishing a corporation to furnish farmers, mechanics and la- 
borers with the tools and implements necessary to carry on their 
trades. 

Little did the framers of the Constitution suppose that after 
having expressly repudiated power to create a bank, and declared 
that all powers not expressly given to Congress were denied, the 
statesmen who followed them, would extract this power out of the 
vague provision as to "the general welfare." The Constitution 
remains the same as when Hancock adopted and Jefferson ex- 
pounded it, but politicians have changed strangely, in their con- 
structions of the national compact. In 1812, Mr. Clay could no 
where find in the Constitution, what he then called "the vagrant 
power" to create a bank. He now sees nothing else in the Con- 
stitution but bank, with all its force branches, like the great beast 
of the Apocalypse with seven heads and ten horns, — a type, one 
would almost think, of this very monster, the United States Bank, 
for it is said of the Beast in Revelation, that such was to be his pow- 
er for a time, on the earth, "that no man might buy or sell, save he 
that had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his 
name."* 

Neither could Mr. Webster find the warrant for a, bank in 
the Constitution in 1816, for he then, and down as late as 1832, 



* Revelation, Chap. 13, 



20 

declared that the framers of the Constitution were hard money 
men — that gold and silver, and not paper, was the law of the land 
at home, and the law of the world abroad, and that 

' : Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes, none have been 
more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money — the most ef- 
fectual of all inventions to fertilize the rich man's kield with the 

SWEAT Of THE POOR MA.\'s BROW." 

And at this moment, and in the face of this declaration, Mr- 
Webster, at the head of the new cabinet, is at work with his com- 
peers in the extra session, coining the sweat of the poor man's 
brow, into unearned dividends for the idle rich from the baseless 
credits of another national paper bank ! Ay, and the laboring 
man who is to produce every thinj, and get but one in twenty of 
the dividends between honest labor and false credit capital, helped 
to put the Secretary there, and to place his party in the as- 
cendant ! 

Before the recent election, every body supposed we had settled 
this bank question — the most trying to our institutions of any 
that has ever agitated parties in this country. 

The present Secretary of State, himself, admitted after the 
second election of Gen. Jackson, that the people had decided 
against a bank. The whig orators and agitators through the 
whole canvass gave the bank question the go-by; and even in his 
Wall Street speech, to the New York merchants, when the day 
was nearly carried, Mr. Webster himself dare not say Bank — 
but declared that he did '■'not say that a national bank was the 
only means to regulate the currency." And even this he said for 
himself alone, and not for his party. 

The candidates of the whig party were held up South and 
West, as anti-bank men. Mr. Rives of Virginia, who in 1834, 
in a four hours speech against the bank, "pledged himself to 
bring forward a Hill, to require all payments into the Treasury to 
be made in gold and silrrr" — vouched to the people of Vir- 
ginia, for Gen. Harrison's opposition to an United Stales Hank. 

"I am not a bank man,'.' said Gen. Harrison himself, in his 
Dayton speech to the multitude ; "once I was, and they cheuted 
me out of every dollar I placed in their hands! " 



Wetrsier't Speech**, Vol. iJ, p el. 



21 

And when asked if he would sign a bill to charter a bank, he 

publicly said — 

"I think the experiment should be fairly tried whether the financial ope- 
rations of the government cannot be carried on without the aid of a nation- 
al bank. If it is not necessary for that purpose, it does not appear to me that 
a bank can be constitutionally chartered. There is no construction I can 

J;ive the Constitution which would authorize it, on the ground of affording 
acilities to commerce." 

With these professions, Gen. Harrison was elected. He died 
before he had acted or spoken on this great question, and his 
place is now filled by the Vice President. 

And while he was a candidate, on the third of October, 1840, 

Mr. Tyler referred the Charleston committee, for his opinion 

on the bank, to his speech in the Senate in 1832, when he voted 

ao-ainst the charter, and said — 

"I protest against the idea that the government cannot do without this 
bank. We are not dependent on this corporation. Wretched indeed would 
be our situation if such were the case." 

At another time, under the sanction of his oath to obey the 

Constitution, he said, — 
"Inasmuch as I believe the creation of this corporation [the U. S. Bank] 

UNCONSTITUTIONAL, I CANNOT, WITHOUT VIOLATION OF MY OATH, HESITATE 
TO REPAIR THIS BREACH THUS MADE IN THE CONSTITUTION WHEN AN OPPOR- 
TUNITY PRESENTS ITSELF, OK DOING SO WITHOUT VIOLATING THE PUBLIC 
FAITH." 

And yet this man, whom Providence has entrusted with the 
veto power, as if on purpose to test his sincerity, is expected to 
perjure his soul by signing any bank bill the extra Congress may 
put upon him ; and his friends say he will do it. 

It is thus demonstrated that the bank was nut at issue before 
the people in the late election. The whigs denied it in Congress 
and out of Congress ; in their newspapers, upon their mottoes 
and handbills; on the stump ami at the polls. Had they fought 
the battle openly under the banner of the bank, the people and 
not the speculators, would have triumphed. 

But the lenders meant bank and nothing but bank, and they 
sought to gain by indirection, what they dare not openly propose 
to the people. 

And no sooner were they in power, than in time of peace and 
of a gradual return to a wholesome and safe circulation through all 
the channels of honest business , with a balance of a million left 



22 

in the treasury, and means, by the -authorized issue of treasury 
notes and the year's revenue, to have carried on the economical 
government they had promised the people ; an extra session was 
called at a cost of more than half a million, and this very question 
of making a bank was placed foremost on the list of measures, as 
if in fact, it had been the whole matter at issue in the Presidential 
election ! 

• And here we are on this fourth of July, 1841, carried back by 
this indirect revulsion in our government, half a century, to the 
old bank question argued between Jefferson and Hamilton in the 
cabinet of the first President under the constitution. 

It is now just fifty years since the first bank was chartered in 
1791, and an extra session of Congress, protracted at the danger 
of the health and lives of its members, is at work in all the jarring 
conflicts of selfish factions, to create another. 

Were the immortal author of the declaration of Independence 
permitted to re-embody himself in the seat he once occupied in 
the Senate bf the United States, and listen to the debate on Mr. 
Clay's bill, would he not marvel to find the country carried back 
again to the first struggle that arose under the Constitution in the 
great conflict between the British and American systems? 

Would he not say to the dictator in the senate, as he said in his 
written opinion the loth of February, 1791, — 

'•The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bili. have 
not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitu- 
tion?" 

Would he not say to the bank makers, of all their measures 

now before Congress, as he said in 1813 — 
■•1 Bee not], in. r in this but a \ demoralization of the nation. 4 

FILCHING FROM INDOSTR1 II KSS1 BARRINGS, WHEREWITH ro BC1LD UP 

pA , i, , 3 i„ D 1UISI GAMBI INC STOI KS, POR SWINDLERS AND SHAVERS, W 
IRS TO CLOSS rHEIR CAREER 01 PIRACIES BT FRABDDLBH1 BANKRUPTCIES. 

And how would he wonder to hear himself quoted, as authority 
for a bank ! and its champion in the person of Mr. Webster, pro- 
claiming that Ju was a JerTersonian democrat, and threatening all 
who should dare deny it, with the weight of his arm if they came 
within its reach ! 

A bold error in a statesman, when frankly maintained, may 
command respect, and will be forgiven bj a generous people. 
But they will never pardon in public men. when they detect it. 



23 

the deliberate practice of deception and false professions, to 2ain 
power under one pretence in order to use it for the opposite pur- 
pose. 

This is the position in which the whig party have placed them- 
selves, and it will belie all history and shame all free institutions, 
if power can be maintained by a systematic fraud upon the popu- 
lar understanding, which was obtained by false pretences so pal- 
pable as those that were practised by the public men now in place, 
for the avowed purpose to humbug the laboring classes, and cajole 
and buy them out of their votes. 

I ask candid men of all parties, and of no party, (if any such 
were left in the late stirring up of every thing that could vote,) 
whether all ancient and modern history can furnish so striking an 
illustration of the truth of the remark of a Roman consul, as 
is now going on, in the contrast between the promises of the can- 
didates of the dominant 'party before election, and their perform- 
ance after! 

Need I enumerate ? They promised retrenchment of the pub- 
lic expenses, and persuaded the people that Mr Van Buren had 
expended thirty millions ina single year. Their Secretary of the 
Treasury now says that he will want some thirty seven millions to 
get through with his first year ; and since he has been in office, 
though but for three months, his expenditures have exceeded those 
of his predecessor, Mr Woodbury, during the like period, one 
hundred thousand dollars per month ! 

They clamored over the defalcations*of a few thousands in pub 
lie officers, and they are silent at the robbery of millions from 
widows and orphans, by the broken United States Bank. 

They told the people that office holders were a curse to the 
country, and were eating out its substance ; and now they increase 
the number, and enlarge the emoluments, — and instead of want- 
ing no office and carrying on the government without any officers 
at all, as they seemed to promise, if they got the power, office 
seeking has become almost their only occupation. There care, as 
is estimated by intelligent whig presses, an average of three hun- 
dred applications for every office in the gift of the acting Presi- 



•24 

dent ; and to save himself from the fate of his unfortunate prede*- 
cessor, he has been compelled to close his doors by public adver- 
tisement, against their ceaseless importunities ! 

They denounced Mr Van Buren as living in the white hou-r 
with furniture and embellishments befitting only royal magnifi- 
cence ; and their first act, when coming into power, was to appro- 
priate six thousand dollars, to make half a dozen bed chambers 
comfortable for their new President! 

And when a democratic member of Congress proposed to buy 
the new furniture by selling the famous "gold spoons" that had 
figured so splendidly in Mr Ogle's speech, it was declared, on the 
authority of the committee on public buildings, and by the very 
men who had circulated the falsehoods in that speech by the cord 
through the land, that there was not a gold spoon in the Presi- 
dent's house. Nay, and not even furniture and crockery enough 
for the servants in the kitchen ! 

They held up proscription, in changing public officers for 
opinion's sake, as the grossest outrage upon the Constitution, and 
of itself sufficient to condemn any administration — and they are. 
now turning out upright and competent democratic officers for 
speaking their opinions, and putting in their places the most 
brawling partizans of the log cabin gatherings — ay, and even 
the corrupt vote-brokers, known by the odious appellation ot 
" pipe layers". And it is stated that this process is going on at 
the rate of five hundred changes a week ! For this I do not 
vouch, but certain it is, that in three months, under General Har- 
rison and Mr Tyler, there have been more removals from office 
by the President, than the whole number of removals under a.U 
the Presidents before, U)t fifty two years, since Washington's In- 
auguration ! 

This assertion will strike you Bfl so extravagant. I feel bouml 
to give the proof. 

In the session of 1840, the whigs called upon President Van 
Burm, and the democrats promptly met the call in Congress, for 
a list of the officers who derived their appointment from the Pre>- 
ident and Senate, and had been removed from office from March 



1789 to March 1840. The official lisl furnished under the call 

of 1840, presents the following removals under each Pre 

V, ashington, in 8 year's, 1" 

John Adams, " 4 " " 
Jefferson, " 8 " 

.Madison, " 8 " 16 

Monroe, " 8 " Vi 

J. Q. Adams/' 4 " 5 

Jackson, " 8 " 85 

\ an Buren, " <l " 40 



Total, 

Not five a year. 

Scarce one who hears me cannot recollect a much larger num- 
ber than this, already displaced by an administration that came 
into power with the promise on its lips that " this system of pro- 
scription sir, u Id itst If be proscribed I" 

So pointed and palpable is this inconsistency that it must lie 
our public men have short memories, and have forgotten what 
they said before election, or think the people have forgotten it. 

General Harrison declared, — "I would rather suffer my right arm 
to be severed from my body, than remove an office holder for opinio 
sake." 

Mr John Tyler said, — "If the offi< overnmi at shall be consid- 

ered as spoils to be distributed among a victorious party, then indi 
consequences are most fatal." 

And so of every head of department, and every prominent whig 
in the country ; but I have not time to go into detail. 

At the rate removals are now secretly going on in ei 
partment, reaching every democratic Posl r at a road en 

ing, with an income of four and sixpence, there will nut, in a 
year, be a man of that party holding a place unde rnmenl 

in the twenty six states. 

On the other hand, when Mr Van Buren, who was pi 
for proscribing, went out of office, of H2 offic rs in the • 
ments at Washington, tl two hundred and thirty nine 

whi living salaries on and 

p.e democr in two of the 

departments all were u hi 

The democratic party do not complain of the application of 

the doctrine of appointing friends of equal integrity and capacity. 

4 



26 

i nstead of opponents, to office. It was the rule which Washington 
laid down for his administration, and which Jefferson and Jack- 

q practised, to a re tent. But they rightly complain, 

that the party which so unscrupulously used the cry of proscrip- 
tion and <;'' rs, to get th is Ives into power, should make 
mure removals in two months than all other administrations had 
done in fifty years, and then justify their own incons by 
coollv saying as Mr Clay did to Mr Buchanan in the Senate — 

" Sir — We cannot allow your friends to remain in office." 

in, they protested against Executive dictation in 'ion, 

and denounced the democratic committee of finance for taking 
the Sub-Treasury Bill from the outlines prepared by a head of 
department — ami we now find them receiving a project for a bank, 
'• letter for letter, and comma for comma," from their I try 

of the Tre md twisting, and shaping, and compromising it, 

to make it escape the veto, and conform to the will of the Ex 
utive, openly avowed by his confidential friends on the floor of 
Con 

They denounced the Constitutional Treasury (which was to 
receive and pay coin, and could not loan a dollar without felony,) 

til government bank ; and they are now making noth 
but a government bank, under the control of the President and 
his officers al Washington, with power to bribe Congress out of 
a paper capital furnished by government credits, and distribul 
in corrupting gratuities to the Stale-. 

I might L r ive a loni: catalogue of other incon ies betw 

promises out of office and performance in — but there that 

cannot be forgotten by the farmer and the workingman, — ■• i 
better times" — the increased prices for produce, and the high 
wages for labor ! 

This was the most successful and the least true, of all the de- 
vice- that deceived bonesl men in the last election. The present 
governor of this Commonwealth put himself into the pi the 

incorruptible and virtuous Mi rton, and contributed most eflfec- 
tivelj to the success of his party, by In- celebrated fictitious 
<-li on the \\ ages of labor. 



2: 

If the experience of the hard workingman has not satisfied 
him of the utter fallacy of that document, and the insincerity 
of the promises that so charmed him with the hopes of bettering 
his condition by a change of administration, facts and argu- 
ment will be unavailing - . He must wait and continue to feed 
himself on false hopes, until he finds labor sixain placed upon 
the lack, to suffer the expansions, contractions, depreciations 
and suspensions of another bank convulsion, finally to be buried 
amid the ruins of another wreck of the paper credit system. 

Surely the laborer cannot doubt the sincerity of the promises 
which secured his vote, — for he has had . ling proof of it since 
the election, in the diminution of employment, the reduction of 
wages, and the virtual abolition by the administration of the 
ten-hour system. He will find and feel it still more, when 
the new bank shall commence its grinding up of the many to 
enrich the (e\v, and interpose its royal prerogative in the divi- 
sion of profits between labor and credit, to demand for the lat- 
ter the lion's share. 

True, there are some so unreasonable as to complain that the 
promised whig " roast beef and two dollars a day," instead of 
the Van Buren " frog soup and fifty cents," have not come yet 
to gladden their hearts ; and it is said that they are even so 
ungrateful to their benefactors as to grumble that by making 
them work longer and get less, they not only can't buy the 
roast beef, but are not allowed extra time enough to catch the 
frogs ! 

And now, what is the duty of the democracy in this cri- 
If the question of bank or no bank had been fairly put to the 
people, they never would have elected public servants to char- 
ter such an institution. Is it right then that the present ad- 
ministration, having got into power by denying that the bank 
was their measure, should establish a bank in the face of the 
disputed constitutional right, and the twice declared will of the 
people in sustaining President on in his veto, and .Mr 

Van Buren in his uncompromising hostility to any such insti- 
tution '. 



No, it is not right, and hence the democratic party will be 
right, in protesting beforehand, and pledging to its perform- 
ance all that our fathers did to liberty in the Declaration of 
Independence uf tyranny, that LF THE WHIGS CHART] 
A BANK, THE DEMOCRATS WILL UNCHARTER IT, 
the firsL moment they regain their ascendency in the national 
councils. 

This is no idle threat. It is the fixed purpose of the democ- 
racy. It has been proclaimed in firm resolve, by the demo- 
cratic legislature of i$e\v Hampshire, and the democratic 
members of the legislature of New York, and is responded to 
in every body of men, where the democracy have spoken on 
this question, since the plan for a fiscal agent was brought up 
in Congress. 

A Senator has declared in hij seat, that the day a charter 
is signed, he will move its repeal, and follow it up to its con- 
summation. And nobly have the calm, untiling, talented and 
true- men in that Senate, (a minority in nothing but nu 
with a strength, ability and self-devoteduess, never surpassed 
by a band of patriotic brotherhood in the defence of right 
against might ; argued down whatever the trained majority has 
voted up, and pledged themselves, amidst the approving accla- 
mations of the whole democracy of the Union, to the great 
work of constitutional reform, — "Repeal, REPEAL, RE- 
PEAL!" 

If they can repeal our constitutional Treasury, w can repeal 
their unconstitutional "fiscal agent," and as sure as the bank 
ses we will do it ! 

The opponents of the bank will start fair on this point. Thej 

arc content, al any moment, to go to the whale people on this 

distinct issue, bu1 they will never submit to a charter into 

which the people have been cheated by false pretences in an 

stion. 

And why Bhould they '. Because, say the advocates of ex« 
elusive privileges for tin- few, a charter is a vested right, and 
vou must not touch it! J?ut the plain answer to this cunning 



29 

sophistry is, that the Constitution is a vested right, higher, 
broader, deeper, than any act of special legislation, which it. 
■was meant to control; and this great vested right in the people 
denies the assumed or stolen authority of a inw men in Con- 
gress, to impose upon coming generations, their false system 
of credit by a law framed under the Constitution to override 
it, and make the creature of legislation greater than the creator 
of the legislature itself. 

There are now some three hundred men assembled at Wash- 
ington, selected from seventeen millions, and a mere majority 
of those men are about to assume the power of imposing upon 
the seventeen millions and their children, a bank charter, which 
they claim the right to perpetuate for twenty, thirty, fifty, or 
an hundred years — and if for one generation why not for all 
coming time ? This same Congress cannot pass a single act, 
which a subsequent Congress may not repeal. And yet they 
will pass an act, which they will call a bank charter, and tell 
you and your children, that it can never be touched till it ex- 
pires by its own limitation. 

What is this but the monarchical principle in government I 
For whatever form or administration of government establishes 
in the state, directly or indirectly, a sovereignty independent 
of the people, is essentially monarchical. It is immaterial 
whether this sovereignty, this exclusive and irrcpealable power, 
is held by a single man or by a privileged few — by a king or 
an aristocracy — by nobles or by corporations — by a divan or a 
bank. Whenever it is irresponsible to the people which it g"\- 
cins, whether it be guarded by the divine right of kings, by 
hereditary succession, by tenures of office for life, or by special 
charters which the people cannot reach, it distinctly embodies 
the monarchical principle. 

Such a principle, the democracy are bound to resi-t, as our 
fathers resisted a like usurpation, in the British Parliament. The 
right to repeal a bank charter is therefore the same aa any other 
act of legislation, a reserved, inherent right, of which a free peo- 



30 

pie cannot divert themselves, without a surrender of their popu 
sovereignty. 

Tins question has hitherto been evaded by the paper mone\ 
power, but if they now charter a b;ink, it lias jot to be distinctly 
'met before the people, and until it is settled on the side of repeal, 
we may come together as often as the anniversary of our fathers 
independence occurs, and boast of the theory of a popular crov- 
ernment of equal rights and just laws, but it will be only theory 
and not practice. 

So far then, it is rather desirable than otherwise that a bank, 
should be chartered for a quarter, or if they please, half a centu- 
ry, in order to test the democratic doctrine of the right of one 
legislature to repeal the acts of another, whether in the concerns 
of state or nation. The people are prepared for it now, for they 
know and feel their rights. Let the new bank be chartered, let 
the President break his oath and sign it, and the direct issue in 
the next national election, will be repeal op the whole » har- 
, br, ami ia every state election, denial of the power of a district 
corporation at Washington to force its branches upon soverc. 
states against their consent : or if that consent is to be made a 
requisite, an equally firm denial of the power of the state legisla- 
ture to subject the ignty to submission to a great cen- 
tral money pow 

In such a conflict, no bank that Congress will charter, can 
stand; for being vigorously assailed at it< birth, it can never har- 
den into tl. igth of manhood as the late bank did, by the 
lent acquiescence in its assumed power and supposed n< ces3it] ami 
:t utility. With all tin ould gather in twent) 
rs, and with all the appliances man who was proclaim 
to be tin' greatest Bnancii i of the ige; of that might] 
i ngine, art now scattered all over tl.- ial world, and 
President, Mr. Nicholas Biddle, ttal credit 

-.■in, tin- observed of ail ol , who with his paper si 

threatened in ami his Cabinet into the P< 

tentian .1- keep himself out of it. 

\\ hot ver, thet me or afa ink . 



31 

g his capital there, will do it with a fair warning of the 
•ultimate consequen 

But in point of fact, if they do make a bank there will be no 
capital put there, nothing but paper credit, and hence how absurd 
it is to suppose that a bank can become a regulator of exchanges, 
a standard of uniform currency, a restorer of sound prosperity, 
and a great balance wheel in money machinery, when after all, it 
is to be based on nothing but a law of Cong] substitute one 

set of paper promises for another, with the certainty that the poor 
man will have to take the cheapest promises, and the rich man 
absorb the better. 

Is it not, my friends, a Strang ;e and most unnatural process, by 
which the party now in power, are attempting to realize the ex- 
travagant and impossible promises they made before election, of 
high prices, high wages, universal wealth without earning it, and 
unlimited credit, without ever paying up, except by more credit I 

They declare the Treasury bankrupt, and yet propose to give 
away three millions of actual revenue from lands, and nine millions 
of imaginary surplus. 

The expenses of the Government, they say, will exceed the 
.income twelve millions. If this were true, they should either in- 
crease the revenue or retrench expenditures. Yet they propose 
to do neither, but to borrow from abroad, and give away at home ' 
A bill is to pass for issuing a stock of twelve millions to be sold 
in Europe where the States are already in debt two hundred 
millions. This twelve millions is to be expended in carrying on 
the Government, and no provision to be made for its payment. 

Congress thus actually creates a national debt where; none in 
fact exists. The new national debt i^ then to be used as the ne- 
cessity plea for a bank to manage the debt, and the debt is to be 
increased by issuing more Unite scrip to borrow the capi- 

tal tor the bank. 

This will work in an endless circle to inci the debt, and 

continue the pretended necessity for the hank, and in the. mean- 
time, the favored few will help themselves, and leave land and la- 
bor to pay for what thej hoard or squander. 



32 

The distribution of the public lands comes in as an appendage 
to this system, under pretext of relieving the states, but it has all 
got to go into the bank, and not a dollar to pay the interest abroad 
on state debts, or the principal at home. 

But what the bank shall be, is still in doubt. The new Presi- 
dent is so much a Virginian that it is affirmed, though doubting, 
he will not consent to a bank unless the state right principle is 
reserved, so that no branch shall be established in a state without 
its express consent. It is easy to see that this would destroy 
every national quality of the bank as a regulator of the currency 
and exchanges, which its advocates have urged as the only plausi- 
ble ground for establishing a bank ; and the admission that 
states must be asked at all, is a confession that the whole bank 
is unconstitutional, and beyond the power of Congress. Mr. Clay 
sees this, and he demands the power to establish branches against 
the assent of the states ; or in some way' to pretend to ask their 
consent, and then force them if they refuse. 

On this point, I apprehend, either the bank scheme will fail, or 
the aciiii_r President, Mr. Tyler, must yield to the actual Pies 
Mr. Clay. The latter will probably be the result. 

In the meantime to seem tu save the state right question, a 
bribe must be offered to the states, to induce them to tak 
branch, and this will be found in the distribution of the public 
lands, and in giving to the states out of an admitted bankrupt 
Tr< and an inadequate revenue, nine mi/liuiis of surplus 

revenue that never el A condition will probably be affix- 

ed, or thejaowcr will be so left in the directors and distributors 

ite will receive its share of the ph the Tr< 

unless it first agrees to admit a branch of the bank I i I 
control of its money power ; and this will be the amount 
iromise and Mr. Clay. 

■. ork- 
and it 
n with indiff) rence, w I 
tion why the louitli day of .lulv is celebrated as the anniversary 
of National Independence. 






33 



Mr. Clay is now the champion of tins new Bank, In 131 1 he 
was the champion against the bank, and defeated i(, and what was 
his argument then ? — 

•• We are possibly (said hej on the eve of a rupture with Great Britain. 
Should such an event occur, would the English Premier experience any dif- 
ficulty in obtaining the entire control of the bank ?" 

We now seem to be approaching another conflict with Great 
Britain, as we were in 1S11, unless, indeed, the letter of the Sec- 
retary of State to the British Minister, in the matter of McLeod, 
and the haste with which he dispatched the Attorney General to 
interfere with State Rights in obedience to the command of Mr. 
Fox, are to be taken as evidence of an intended submission to 
any arrogant demand England may choose to make upon us. 

How else, are we preparing to sustain our independence of 
Great Britain, if she drives us to defence or submission ? — Why, 
by running in debt to her ! Twelve millions of stocks are to be 
sold to acquire means to carry on the Government and pay the 
office holders. Nine millions more are to follow, for borrowing- 
so much money to give to the States, to put into the new bank, 
and six millions more, to raise the subscription of the United 
States to the bank stock. Here are twenty-seven millions of Na- 
tional debt to be salted down in the vaults of British bankers, and 
we are then to talk loud and bluster and look big at John Bull if 
he treads on our toes; though he stands ready, with our bonds in 
his hand, to tap brother Jonathan on the shoulder like a bum 
bailiff, and whisper in his ear, " better keep quiet my friend, and 
pay up your debts, before you quarrel with me, or I will seize 
every ship and every bale of your cotton in my ports, and take my 
pay for the two hundred millions State scrip and the thirty millions 
United States stock you owe me, for helping you make a bank." 
What will brother Jonathan have to say to that ? Why, pay 
off John Bull in paper to be sure, there can be no metal in the 
business, for if he wont take bank bills, we must put our hand to 
any sort of paper he may draw up for us, even if it were to re. 
store the Stamp Act and the tax on tea ! 

So much for the effect this bank is to have on National charac- 
ter and National credit abroad 
5 



And what ia it to do at home, save to buy up State Legisiaturr 
corrupt members of Congress and editors by loans never to be 
paid ; again derange business, increase the inequality in condition 
and property, make the rich richer and t he poor poorer, and fi- 
nally explode as its miserable predecessor has done, disgracing tin 
country abroad and nearly ruining it at hon 

Depend upon it, my/friends, this is not the remedy for any sup- 
posed or real evils that exist among us. The old experiment of 
substituting false credit for substantia] production, may be tried 
over and over again in this country, but it will be with the same 
results that have attended the system everywhere, to depress the 
many and elevate the few. 

There are distinctions and inequalities enough in society, from 
natural causes, and when legislators and bankers and specula- 
undertake to add to the advantages the non-producers have 
over the laborer, by "exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer, 
and the potent more powerful, why should the humble member> 
of societv. the farmers, mechanics and laborers, who have neither 
the time nor the means to secure any like favors to themselves," 
give their aid to these schemes of plunder, without which the] 
can never be established, to bind grievous burdens on the backs 
Of their children? 

[f there is a principle of free government recognized in the 
Declaration of Independence, it is the principle of true equality. 
This was laid as the corner stone of our institutions. The build- 
and framers of all other government- had utterly rejected it. 
Inequality is the basis of their systems: equality is the foundation 
of ours. The Declaration did not assert this great truth as a 
mere abstract proposition. It not only proclaimed that all men 
are created equal, but it affirmed the individual and inalienable 
rights of ever] citizen in the equal enjoyment, so far as gov. 
in. Mit is concerned, of" life, libert] and the pursuit of happinec 
and to lecure tin i rights, was declared to be the only right foi 
governments to exist among nun. deriving their just powers from 
the consent of the governi d 

Thi sent ol the governed cau onl) be defined in written 



35 

..stitutions, which may be amended by the people, but which 
*he rulers elected by the people should never be permitted, with 
impunity, to disregard or violate. 

Hence the importance of written Constitutions of government, 
and of a ricrid adherence to the Constitution so framed. Conflicts 
h;:ve never arisen, in free states, from the refusal of the govern- 
ment to exercise a power which the people have given, but from 
the tendency of government to stretch its constructive beyond its 
literal powers. 

That, therefore, is the safest a imiuistration which exercises the 
fewest constructive powers, and as a general rule, the less we see 
and feel of government, the better for the people. 

In all governments but ours, the accidental qualities of heredit- 
ary rulers, or an hereditary aristocracy, determine the character 
of the government as it affects the people. It is impossible there- 
fore, to establish equality of righ s, because the right of the gov- 
ernment itself to exist, depends upon the denial of the right of 
the many to govern themselves. The base must be depressed, or 
the column cannot be elevated. 

This is the grand distinction between free and arbitrary govern- 
ments, which the American people cannot too devoutly ponder 
upon; and this day, above all others in the history of man, and 
this period, above all others in our own history, should he 
apart and consecrated to the contemplation of the princi] 
true equality which the Declaration of Independence, and the 
Constitution engrafted upon it, were designed to establish. 

In the old world the struggle of the oppressed millions i 
reform and change governmen . I ndef our institutions, the 
iggle only need be to ma'; ... ration of the govern- 

ment conform to the Constitution. 

There are eight hundred millions of people under various forms 
of o , throughout the world, and most of these forms 

have under no variation, no improvement, in the lapse oi 

centuries. The monarchical principle rules or preponderat 
every where — the democratic principle no where. The onlv uu- 
i ment made in government, has been just in proportion tu the 



mce of the popular will toward the democratic principle; and 
yet to this dav, here and every where, the alarm cry always La- 
been, lest the government should become too democratic, and the 
distribution of property and privilege too equal. And the people, 
who alone can profit by the advance of that principle, are placed 
in the fills, bv their drivers, and made to hold it back, lest in its 
mighty progress, it should crush a few ornamental flowers of the 
favored few, though it is freighted with food for the millions, who 
must suffer and starve if it cannot move onward. 

Why is it then, that of all earth's government?, ours is the only 
one in which, after five thousand years experiment, the democratic 
principle forms the ackowledged basis of the Government? Be- 
cause, wherever it exists in other forms of government, it only 
exists as treason. In ours, it is the Constitution itself. And yet 
even here, it is now attempted to drive it out of the Constitution ; 
and the democratic principle is so cramped, and cheated, and 
crushed bv the money power, that it has never had fair play under 
the broad Declaration of Independence, and all our well guarded 
written Constitution-. At this moment we are going backwards 
to old abuses, not forward to new progress and improvement. The 
old world and the new, the United States and England, are falling 
into the arms of old conservative toryism. 

What works this never failing tendency to the monarchical 

principle, amon I the freest and most intelligent people' Not 

physical power, not even ambition, but avarice and paper money : 

t In pressure <>f systems of Bpecial legislati >n through favored 

ses and privil' ged orders. 

It i- wholly immaterial whether the mi- se domi- 

nant cla kept up by hereditary titles <>r successire corpora- 

tions. Wherever either cla-- i- permitted to become powerful, it 
will rule the rest. Hence, all over the world, the slavery of the 
strong many to the cunning few. The rulei ol the eight hun- 
dred millions are but one in ten thousand, and yet the eighty 
thousand ride the eight hundred million-, just as we train the 
horse to the bit, because 1. not know Ins strength. 

The lew, who riot upon the misery of the millions of Bun 



37 

tell thf-ro " it is their destiny — the condition of their birth, — that 
here below their life is only one of suffering and toil, and cannot 
be otherwise." The millions-believe it, and hence their hopeless 
submission, only broken by occasional unavailing struggles of 
desperation. 

But, in reality, what is this condition of the laboring classes of 
the old world, which they^are told is irremediable ? Their suffer- 
ings whence are they ? Not from themselves, but from the pies- 
sure of unjust laws, which with a single united blow, they might 
sunder from their galled limbs. 

The same system is now at work in this country, and for the 
first time in forty years, it has become the distinct, avowed, de- 
termined policy of our rulers. The same cunning in the few, 
and credulity in the many, which enslaves the masses of the old 
world to toil for an hereditary aristocracy, has at last brought the 
producing classes here in a like submission to successive corpora- 
tions. Here is our great danger. 

As a government, capable of all the action and energy that 
national independence, national glory and domestic security may 
require, ours is no longer an experiment. We have nothing to 
fear from force abroad or fiction at home, and on this sixty fifth 
anniversary of the day when our fathers pledged their lives and 
sacred honor to establish a popular form of government, we meet 
. with the lull assurance that the dangers they most feared, for free 
institutions, have ceased to give cause for alarm. 

Were we to examine the thou- inda of eloquent and fervid ora- 
tions that the past anniversaries of this glorious day have called 
forth from the best intellects in the land, we should find that 
scarcely one of the topics of warning, rebuke and alarm that filled 
the bosoms of the prophetic and patriotic with fears tor the per- 
manency of free government among us, is now a subject of serious 
apprehension. 

But tlje visions of the patriarchs of our liberties, have m t 
ceased to be of tearful moment to their descendants. Eternal 
vio-ilance in guarding our institutions is still the price we must 
pay for liberty. What was least feared in the early trial of our 



xnment, — what the framera of the Constitution thought they 

had unst , by denying to Congress the power to make 

porations ; has now become the most formidable obstacle to the 

progress <>!' true equality. The Declaration of Independence in 

its fundamental doctrine of equal rights to all and exclusive privi- 

s to none, is this day more in danger at home, than if it w< 
threatened from abroad, by all the combined despotisms of the 
old world. 

Fellow Citizens, young men who are coming forward into 
action, is that declaration of human rights dear 10 you 1 Be sure 
then, that with ceaseiess vigilance you guard it against tins secret 
undermining of its well-laid foundations. Be not content with 
the mere forms of constitutional liberty, but demand and enforce 
the living spirit. Spurn the slavish doctrine that the people are 
the mere dependants and pensioners of their own government, to 
be fed <>r starved as it chances to make or unmake a paper bank. 
Tell those who have got the rule by falsely charging upon govern- 
ment the fruits of their own follies, that it is not the principle or 
policy of our institutions to look to the government to take care of 
the people, but to the people to take care of the government. 
Te ich them to feel in their misgotteti places of power, that in this 
country we do not appoint rulers , ver us, but elect public servants 
under us — that there is a hii her principle than the best investment 
iu stocks, and a dearer interest than per centage in profits; ami 
that the measure of true prosperity is not, what will give the 
largest dividend to thos< who labor least, but what will most p 
mote among us that culture of mind and soul, upon which alone 
rests the true boast of our free institutions over all artificial and 
d S) -•.'■in~, that /it r, , 

•• .Man is the ii"'.'!' r growth <"t m><1 suppli 
Let no true believer in man's capacity for self-government be 

discOU ere, the people for a time have tailed 

to !.:• tni ■ to t!i mselves !t must be. that tin- r< ign <-f false prom- 

fal ■ theories c nnot last long. The human mind, at 

Ii I in our country, has too much light to Miller for more than 

term, the government of force; or fraud. This dogma, that 



39 

has so long ruled tiie old world, is shaken even there. Ii canhol 
find a permanent footing here ; and though we seem to be thrown 
back upon it, in the progress of true equality, as if man were 
every where tired of liberty, and had rather be taken care of as 
a slave, than have the trouble of taking care of himself as a free- 
man, yet let not the true friends of liberty in its largest sense, 
despond at accidental hindrances; for in the'language of one who 
utters the voice of prophetic freedom, in the midst of the systems 
of centuries that have enslaved man in the old world, " certain as 
we are of our ideas, trusting as we do in truth and nature, we 
need be little moved by the perversity of tyrants or the degrada- 
tion of slaves; we still have w infallible appeal to reason 

AND TO TIME." 



\ 






